MAME – Play classic Arcade games, the one you used to feed coins with

     

Remember Pac Man, Mortal Kombat, Metal Slug, Galaga, Marvel vs Capcom, or House of The Dead 3? They were fun, but as the gaming technology advances forward, they put the dust on those classic arcade cabinet leaving them as ancient artifacts of the gaming history. So we rarely get to see these cabinets in public nowadays. I tried to find to find places that has arcades, but so far the only place I’ve heard is in Century Theaters, and they rarely have button mashing games; just only shooting games with a plastic gun, and racing games; no games for hard core fighters, or button mashers(They used to, but they have to meet the demands for the new wave of generation, and so on). Maybe because people these days don’t have any interests in fighting, or button-mashing games; or maybe the arcade owner knows that there is a way to play them for free, which their thought is that they won’t profit as much as shooting, physical(Like throwing a basketball), pinball or racing games; so they don’t take their chances. Well Anyway, in the future; the world will forget the classic arcade games, so I’ll tell you how you can play those games on your computer for free.

What dose MAME stands for? Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Here’s a article about it on Wikipedia.org.

How to download MAME
Click Here to download MAMEUI (32bit) 0.126 from http://www.emulator-zone.com/, this download is easy to operate. After you download it, install(it will extract), go into the MAME folder and you’ll find the application inside to run MAME.

I once tried to run Mame for the second on my old computer, but it freezes my computer every time I try to run it. I’ll tell you the rest of the story later in this post.

If you’re use a Linux, or want more options, you can click here for a list of MAME download.
I’ve heard in an article of Wikipedia that there is a MAME for mac. Click here to find out.

---

 

(From left to right: Berzerk, Metal Slug 3, Samurai Shodown, Street Fighter II, The Simpson Arcade, Root Beer Tapper)

Where to get ROMs:
Use for personal, do not profit from the games, and own the ROM if you own the game(if it’s possible)…
http://www.emuasylum.com/ My favorite place for MAME ROM, it also have its Top 100 Download in the MAME ROM sections. However, It does limit your download by how many size you have download for the day.
http://www.rom-world.com/ Never downloaded anything there before, but I checked it with siteadvisor, and it’s a clean site. You don’t have to read the next two paragraphs.
http://romhustler.net/ should be your last resort.

When I was browsing for MAME ROMs, I was looking for the latest in the series(like playing Samurai Shodown 4, instead of Samurai Shodown 1; Or playing street fighter 3 instead of street fighter 2), but sometimes, the good games are not in the last of the series. I’ve played Samurai Shodown 1, and it was so fun, the comments of Samurai Shodown and SS4 from emuasylum.com said that this was better than the rest of it’s series/sequel. Just for everyone’s reference, the latest version/game aren’t the best as the one before, like the sequel of a movie may not be better than the one before.

You can find Arcade titles by searching into Xbox Live Arcade games. If you come across a game you like, you can use the title of the game to search for Mame roms; just don’t expect the arcade MAME versions have more features than Xbox Live’s(cooperative, easy local multi-player, online battles, leaderboard, new “modes”, that sort of stuff).

---

Ok, I got the ROM, now what? 
So, you’ve downloaded a rom, and it’s in its .zip format. Good, leave it like that, that’s how it supposed to be(pretty cool, now you can get ROMs from downloading, instead of downloading and unzipping/extracting). So, remember when you installed MAME, it gave you a folder? 

1. Go into that folder
2. Go to the “roms” folder
3. Drag and drop your unzipped MAME ROM. You are done, repeat the steps whenever you get mame roms(helpful if you make a shortcut for the “roms” folder).

Now go back to the MAME folder, run the Mame application, go to the search bar in front of you, and type the game you downloaded; or the file name of the .zip file you downloaded(Example: Operation wolf, or opwolf).

---

Parent ROMs (read this, newly Mame ROM hunters):
Let’s say you’ve downloaded a ROM called Root Beer Tapper, and you put it in your roms folder in Mame. You run Mame, you type in “rbta”, you see Tapper(root beer), you double clicked it and you expected to play. Well it’s not going to work, because Root Beer Tapper is a patch/child of Tapper(Budweiser); which is the Parent rom. So to play Tapper(root beer), you’ll need the rom, “Tapper(Budweiser)”. So go download it, and put both of them in the rom folder. Now try running it, it will work. Some times the application shutdowns, so try re-running it a few times(it happened to me). If it doesn’t work after several tries(which never happened to me), then I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do at that point. Well, now you know parent roms, and child roms.

Bios(read this, Mame ROM hunters):
If you try to run Samurai Shodown on Mame, it’s not going to work and it will give you a list of things that are missing in the rom. Why? I don’t know, but you do need to go through some procedures. First click here, and click “download now” to download neogeo.zip. Ok, now go over with these steps, and let’s say you have downloaded “Samurai Shodown / Samurai Spirits” from emuasylum.com:

1. Extract neogeo.zip
2. Go inside the neogeo folder
3. Select all(CTRL and A)
4. Drag it all in the “samsho.zip” file, and wait until it’s done doing its stuff
5. Put samsho.zip in the roms folder
6. Run Mame, and run Samurai Shodown (type samsho on the search bar). Now it should work.

There are also different bios that any ROMs needs. Like the King Of Fighters, even the neogeo.zip don’t have everything to run it. So if you have any problems, use Google search, they have the answers, because somebody has gone through this like you already.

UPDATE: I was able to play kof2002 without unzipping and zipping with any Bios file!
For kof2002, grab your neogeo.zip file and drag it in your in to your MAME’s roms folder. That’s all there is to do, now try playing kof2002 without touching the insides of its .zip self.

---

 What control you should get?
If you’re going to use your keyboard, then it might not be fun, and won’t give you an arcade experience. Some  games can actually break your keyboards(especially laptops). Gamepads are ok, but an arcade/fighting stick is a better choice. You can find one on the Internet. The X-arcade is said to be the best, but’s it’s big and is used often in building MAME Cabinet. The Hori Xbox360 Fighting Stick EX 2 is my favorite, and well spent. I recommend it if you want to play without a MAME cabinet, or playing fighting games on xbox360. And if its stick starts to get loose(or if you want to change the ball top into a bat), you can mod it with this blog. You can check my review on my Gamepads Review post. I’ll show you how to install the Hori stick to your computer on the next post. MAME is not limited to buttons. You can play shooting games, track ball, and driving games with each of their own peripherals.

---

MAME cabinet:
MAME cabinet are those big, heavy, and tall gaming structure that people pay and plays  games on. Why are they big? I don’t know, but they stand out in our memory whenever we think of the word “arcade.” Because of that, people build these cabinet to get the arcade experience in their home; we can call this, “MAME Projects.” Building your own is much cheaper than buying a MAME cabinet. If you want to build one, then you should search “MAME cabinet” or “MAME project”(You don’t have to capitalize the “MAME” part). I have heard of 3 different types of MAME cabbies so far. Arcade cabinet(we just talked about it), Mini cabinet, and bar-top/table-top cabinet. To me, the mini cabinet are great if you want to move the cabinet easier than the arcade size, have kids(assuming you’re not MJ), and/or if you want to sit down on a chair and play. To me, the Table-top cabinet are great for playing simple and casual games(like Mrs. Pac Man, Dig Dug, Pong, Metal Slug, but don’t take my word for it; any games that suits you well) , to move around easier than the mini cabby, and to play on your table or bar counter. Cabinets doesn’t affect gameplay if you just want to play MAME arcade games, but if you want to bring back the arcade experience, make a object that perspire the arcade era, a monument of part of your video-gaming life, or just for the heck of it for yourself, your friends/family, or party/high-school-reunion, you can’t go wrong with a MAME cabinet. The cost of building one could be around $200.00, but it depends what plan and materials you’re are going to buy with. I don’t have one, but it looks pretty awesome.
 
(From left to right: Arcade Cabinet, bartop/tabletop cabinet; all from Google image search)

Other Arcade emulators
Other than MAME, their are other Arcade emulators. Click here to see them. I’ve heard that the Kawaks are good for playing CPS1 (marvel vs Capcom), and CPS2 games. I don’t think you need neogeo.zip. I don’t know, I’ve played MvsC on MAME it works fine. You might want to research or ask questions in MAME/emulator forums about the difference between MAME and Kawaks. I just recommend MAME for people who want to play arcade games with no hassle.

---

On the Wikipedia article provided, it says that there are some games you can’t play. Well, I just played Marvel vs Capcom(Turbo), The Simpson Game, Berzerk on a non gaming laptop, and nothing went wrong. All classic games will still work. So I beat the theory in the Wikipedia article. Maybe because I have 2gb of RAM.

I once tried to run Mame for the second on my old computer, but it freezes my computer every time I try to run it. Luckily, it only freezes when it searches ROM in one point in time, thus giving me time to disable the rom search. If you have a computer that’s a bit outdated, then I think you should follow these steps: Run MameUI32, go to Options from the top, click on Interference Options…, uncheck “Search for new games on start”, and hit OK. But you must do it really fast. I couldn’t do it, and you can only do it once. After that chance, you’ll have to delete the Mame folder, re-extract it through installation, and try it again.

When running a game, press 5 to insert coin, press 1 to start as player 1, press F3 to soft reset, press SHIFT and F3.

Further reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Project-Arcade-Build-Your-Machine/dp/0764556169/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222564327&sr=8-1 

God damn it, this is the longest article I’ve ever written. Please, say thanks.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• My MAME Cabinet: Retrocade
• My MAME arcade cabinet project is underway!